Another fly from the railway station at Evesham.
"How dare you come here, you villain!" shouted Captain Monk, rising in
threatening anger, as the fly's inmate called to the driver to stop and
began to get out of it. "Are you not ashamed to show your face to me,
after the evil you have inflicted upon my daughter?"
Philip Hamlyn, smiling kindly and calmly, caught Captain Monk's lifted
hands. "No evil, sir," he said, soothingly. "It was all a mistake. Eliza
is my true and lawful wife."
"Eh? What's that?" said the Captain quite in a whisper, his lips
trembling.
Quietly Philip Hamlyn explained. He had taken the previous day to
investigate the matter, and had followed his wife down by a night train.
His first wife _was_ dead. She had been drowned in the _Clipper of the
Seas_, as was supposed. The child was saved, with his nurse: the only
two passengers who were saved. The nurse made her way to a place in the
south of France, where, as she knew, her late mistress's sister lived,
Mrs. O'Connett, formerly Miss Sophia Pratt. Mrs. O'Connett, a young
widow, had just lost her only child, a boy about the age of the little
one rescued from the cruel seas. She seized on him with feverish
avidity, adopted him as her own, quitted the place for another
Anglo-French town where she was not previously known, taught the child
to call her "Mamma," and had never let it transpire that the boy was not
hers. But now, after the lapse of a few years, Mrs.
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